After doing what I thought was a correct install and rebooting, the screen would flash three times and boot into text mode. I went back to the "nv" driver (see last paragaph about vi) and searched this forum and the mandrakeclub forum for clues.

I found one on the mdk-club that said that booting into failsafe is not a normal text mode and that the driver won't install properly for reasons that I didn't understand (a bit over my newby head). The problem is I didn't know of any other way to get out of Xwindows. Pressing cntrl-alt-backspace took me back to a graphical looking login with no other way to log in to text mode. I finally found a way.

In grahpics mode I opened the Mandrake Control Center and clicked on Hardware>XFdrake>Options>No>Quit.
That allowed me to reboot into the real text mode, 'cd' to the correct directory and 'sh' the ...4363.run file.

Now I just had to change to the "nvidia"' driver in the XF86Config-4 file and "startx" (or did I reboot before starting x?). Then I could go back to mdkcontrol center>hardware>xfdrake>options>yes>quit then reboot and ta! da! it's working! Man, I'm feelin like a geek already!

Anyway if your using vi for the first time (like me) to edit the config file I suggest the book "A PRACTICAL QUIDE TO LINUX" by Mark G Sobell. It's got a whole chapter on vi. You need to know the read command ":r XF86Config-4", the insert command ":i", the write command ":w! XF86Config-4" and quit ":q"
Happy Hackin!

Well, I should qualify that. It works as long as I don't reboot the system. If I use the NVIDIA install script, afterwards I can log in to any user, the NVIDIA splash screen appears and then KDE starts. As soon as I reboot, I'm back to where I was before...the screen flashes a couple of times and the system locks.

it's not good to install in runlevel 5, one must go into level 3, but not with the failsafe, for some reason Ican't remember. one can '/etc/init.d/dm stop' to kill the display manager and '/etc/init.d/dm start' to start it again. I think that would be a lot easier...

if it works but not when you reboot: try 'insmod nvidia' or add nvidia to the /etc/modules.conf file...

I think this happens when you did not exited X the right way...

one can go to text login by pressing CTRL-ALT-F1 and log in as root and kill the display manager from there...